


A Being From The Sky, Hewn Of Marble

by seasalt (lawboy)



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, it’s not explicitly said it’s her but that’s what i intended when i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23679430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawboy/pseuds/seasalt
Summary: One dark January’s night, Anise finds a woman in the snow. She’s been in an accident— her leg is broken, and with the clothes she’s wearing she’s lucky to be alive.She /is/ a woman. A human woman. No matter how strange she is, there’s no way she could be anything else.There’s no way she could be anything wrong.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	A Being From The Sky, Hewn Of Marble

**Author's Note:**

> I found an old abandoned fanfic someone wrote where Blue Zircon flees to Earth after the trial and ends up crash-landing and being found by a human. It wasn’t the most amazing fic, but I found the idea interesting and wanted to write something similar, to explore what a human might think of Gems if they didn’t know they existed, as well as the uncanny valley-ness Gems might have to humans.

The snow was falling like curtains, the night that she arrived. It swathed the land in ash-white and blacked out the stars— the world was a stage, stripped of colour and feature. Waiting for its lead performer.

And in she came, stage left. A ball of green fire tearing the sky apart with a whine that set the dogs barking and scrambled the TV signals. Then a shattering, the worst carwrecks compounded in a frightening, tuneless symphony.

That was what got Anise out of bed. Grumbling and shivery, she shoved boots on her feet and wrapped hastily in a coat and gloves, before grabbing a flashlight and stumbling out into the gale to investigate.

In one of the far fields lay a nest of mangled sheet metal, still crackling faintly from its exposed wires. Strange bits and bobs Anise didn't recognise— but then, she'd never known much about machinery. She brushed it off, searching the rubble some more, then stumbled back in alarm as some _thing_ began to move.

It was human, but wrong. Far too gangly, far too _big_ — and not a scratch on it despite the crash it'd been through. Its head was huge, balancing wobbily on an impossibly slender neck, and when it turned (a silhouette against the ground, for Anise had shut her light off) she could see that its nose extended as long as her middle finger.

The old children's tales came back to Anise, of forest cryptids and river ghouls and escaped half-human labrats. But then the thing groaned, clutching its chest and keeling over, and her wits came back to her. Scary stories weren't real. Whatever silliness her eyes imagined in the half-light, the fact remained that this was a person— an _injured_ person —on a dark night in the cold. She was in danger, and she needed help.

Propping up her lit torch in the snowbank, she picked carefully past the jagged debris towards the person. She was curled up on her side, legs trapped under rubble, and despite being half-sunk in slush that was quickly freezing again she didn't shiver. She almost looked blue— but that was a trick of the light, Anise knew. Grabbing her by the armpits, she kicked the scrap metal off her and dragged her up the snowbank. Thankfully, she left no trail of blood.

When she set her down, the person began to stir. Anise had been about to go back for her light, but froze. Kneeling down by her side, she rubbed her cheeks with her gloved hands, sighing with relief as the woman opened her eyes.

"What on earth are you doing out here?" She asked. "Didn't you see the weather report?"

The woman blinked at her. In the dark, she couldn't make out her expression; her eyes seemed far wider than was possible, blank with shock like she'd been caught in headlights. Suddenly, she jerked to her feet, stumbling a few steps before falling with a pained scream. Anise darted for her torch, running to check on her— and then she noticed her leg. It was bent at a sickening angle, foot twisted almost entirely backwards. Choking down the urge to vomit, she put her torch between her teeth and hoisted the woman up over her shoulders, carrying her slowly back towards the house.

Inside, it was pitch-black, save for the beam of her flashlight; it caught the walls and furniture at odd swinging angles, casting shadow creatures in the corners of her vision. Anise stumbled her way to the loungeroom, legs burning, before setting the woman heavily onto the couch. Her limbs hung haphazardly off the sides like blackberry vines— gnarled. Twisted. She attempted to straighten her out before rising to flick on the lights.

Twice, and thrice, she flipped the switch. No luck. The power must've been knocked out by the storm. She lit the fire then tried to call an ambulance, but the phone lines were out too.

"We'll have to wait til the storm stops to take you to the hospital. Suicide, driving in this weather."

The woman shivered, but said nothing. Anise scrutinised her. Her eyes— oh, they _were_ far too wide —stared glassily at the ceiling, mouth slightly open and breath short and shallow. Her face was long and flat— and had the crash done that to her nose? Or was it some costume accessory? She hadn't been imagining its length before. It looked even stranger now.

"We should get you out of those wet clothes." She turned away, stoking the fire. "I'll run you a hot bath.“

"You want me to take my clothes off?" It was the first thing she'd said; her voice was rough, and much more mature than she'd expected. She spoke cautiously and lisped her 'S's.

"Can you do it by yourself?"

She nodded. Anise responded in turn, and left the room to draw the bath.

When she came back the woman was naked, sprawled widely and unbothered by her lack of modesty. Anise tried not to stare as she picked her up, but she couldn't help but notice the featurelessness of her chest. It was a smooth plane of ice-cold skin, with no nipples— maybe she'd had a mastectomy, poor thing. Whatever the case, it wasn't her business to ask.

She lowered her carefully into the water, resting her neck against the back wall and ever-so-delicately tucking her legs into the tub's confines. In the dull light of the two candles she'd managed to find, it was hard to check for injuries— dancing shadows looked like bruises until they swung their way off her skin. As best Anise could tell, it seemed this woman was unscathed. Even her leg (which she inspected with a great deal of queasiness) was unmarred by bruising, and hadn't even swollen up. Maybe the cold had stopped that. She was no doctor.

With a wet cloth and a bar of soap, Anise began to scrub the woman's skin. She gave a squawk of protest and struggled away from her, clutching her throat, and when Anise finally coaxed her hands away she saw the Thing. A dark, glinting box embedded in her skin— was it a medical implant? Some piece of fashion? A crack ran down its surface; despite the woman's panicked pleas she touched it, and felt the hot hum of electricity. Static shocked her, and she jerked back, locking eyes with the other.

"What is that?"

"My gem." She was trembling, voice tinged with fear. "Don't you know what a gem is?"

"Is it jewellery?" She reached for it again, and the woman slapped her away.

"Stop it! If it shatters, I'll die!"

Anise recoiled. Silence hung like static between them; the woman was a caged animal, backed into a crevice and ready to pounce.

She inhaled, whole body taut.

"Are you human?"

A pause. The woman gaped, hunched forward, and laughed: an incredulous sound. Anise joined her uncertainly.

"Sorry, that was rude."

The woman handwaved her down, face covered by a hand. "No, no, no, no." She wheezed. "You thought- _I_ was human?"

Her stomach dropped. The shadows in the room suddenly seemed too big, and chills coursed through her— this was an ancient fear, a remnant from nomadic ancestors. Genetic memories of warped faces, spidery things in the dark, changelings in human cloaks with the twisted muzzles of a deep-ocean beast— this was primal, paralysing, uncanny discomfort and the desperate urge to escape this _thing_ she'd let inside her home.

But it had to be human.

But it was _wrong, wrong_ and no human looked like _this_. No human could pierce another with dinner plate eyes and tiny, irisless pupils, brushing a poreless cheek with fingers that— she saw, oh god, she saw now —had _no nails_. No human grew fur down their neck but stayed hairless on the rest of their body— and had she always been this blocky, as if she were built of wood and not flesh and bones? Had she always been missing her collarbone, her ribs, the dips of shadow where her deltoids met her biceps? Did she have muscles _at all?_

The thing’s smile dropped. It raised its hands and before it could attack Anise snatched a candle off the shelf and beat it with it, thrusting it flame-first towards its eyes, brushing hair that didn’t alight, didn’t part in strands— then the creature’s words came back to her, and she went for its gem, and that’s when it reared back and threw itself out of the bath. Collapsing onto the tiles, it skittered, pushing its broken foot worthlessly against the ground to launch upright; Anise pounced on its back and slammed it into the floor with a crunch, and it shrieked.

“Don’t hurt me!”

She froze, then pulled back. The thing sobbed, trying to rise, before its arms grew limp and jointless and it slipped to the floor. Cautiously, Anise stepped around it. She rolled it over with a prod of her foot.

Its gem was missing a chunk, broken pieces glittering the floor where it’d lain. Its arms flicked and writhed like dropped lizard’s tails, twice as long as they had been; Anise dry-heaved. The thing shivered and wailed and begged, in disjointed sounds, to be spared. It apologised. It hadn’t done a thing and it apologised.

Eyes squeezed shut, Anise let the candle slip from her hand. It clattered on the ground, and she stumbled back against the door. The thing grew quiet. She heard its panicked breaths.

“This is a nightmare.” She muttered, throat filled with bile. “This is a nightmare, this isn’t real.”

Her hand found the cold embossed metal of the doorknob. Dazed, she let herself into the hall, fell against the wall and caught her breath.

“That wasn’t real. Monsters aren’t real.”

Silence. Her chest stilled. She wiped shaky palms on her pants.

“There’s nothing behind the door. There’s nothing there.” But she was too afraid to look. “I’ll wake up in the morning, and it’ll all be gone.”

Ten minutes to build the nerve to move through the dark, and eventually she made her way back to bed.

In the morning, the sun blessed the earth; with its rising came the knowledge of safety, the warm embrace of light on the snows. No demons could lurk now. No myths could come true.

When Anise eventually checked the bathroom, she found it abandoned. The bath was still full, the candles out— she walked inside, and something crunched under her shoe. Something deep blue that glittered like stars.

But the creature was never real.


End file.
